Rabbit Garden Pest Control

Although adorable, rabbits are common vegetable garden pests.

Home gardening can be an outlet for relieving stress as well as providing gardeners with the opportunity to grow fresh, delectable and healthy vegetables. Insects and other pests are challenges the gardener has to deal with. Scents, aluminum pie pans and scarecrows are just a few inexpensive tools gardeners used to discourage pests. One familiar garden pest is the rabbit. Rabbits prefer vegetable gardens, which have a wide variety of their favorite foods, including lettuce, cabbage, carrots and spinach.

Targeted Vegetables

Rabbits eat a variety of fruits and vegetables, which make it difficult to keep them out of vegetable gardens. Rabbits enjoy eating lettuce, carrots, apples, strawberries, pears, broccoli, kale, spinach, celery and tomatoes. Rabbits will eat almost any leafy vegetable. Rabbits will eat garden vegetables to the ground and damage the bark around certain bushes.

Types of Repellents

Repellents for rabbits include those which give the target plant a strong bitter taste and those that have scents that are repulsive to rabbits or scents that elicit fear. Repulsive scents may have the smell of rotten eggs or blood, and scents that elicit fear may smell like the urine of a fox or other animal-like scent. Repellents used to discourage nibbling are nontoxic and sprayed directly on the targeted plant. You can soak bulbs in a repellent solution for a few minutes before planting to discourage rabbits.

Commercially made bloodmeal spread around the base of the plant will assist in preventing rabbits from targeting vegetables. The unpleasant scent of blood is detected only by the rabbit or other animals and goes unnoticed by the human nostril.

Prevention/Solution

You can control rabbits by placing fencing around the entire garden or around individual targeted plants. Chicken wire works well because of the small mesh. Plant the wire at least 8 inches into the soil, because rabbits, who are diggers, can destroy the plant from the root up.

Discourage rabbits by planting perennials that are considered less desirable by rabbits around the targeted plants. According to the University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension, perennials such as wild indigo, hosta, red hot poker, yarrow, meadow sage, sedum, aster, snake root and oriental poppy are perennials that discourage rabbits.

Because rabbits do not like placing their paws on metal, placing oven racks or other metal racks around the vegetable plants will prevent the rabbit from nibbling.

Reproduction and Habitat

Female rabbits produce during the early spring, and they can have three or four litters each year. A litter can include as many as three or four offspring. They live in areas that provide protection and coverage, found in thickets, large weed growth and in rock piles. One of the best ways to minimize their impact on garden vegetables is to clean up their natural habitat. Rid the area of large piles of rock and branches. Rabbits move around at early dawn and after dusk, so in between times, they are in hiding. Traps can be placed around their natural habitat.

Considerations

Some rabbit traps are designed to kill the rabbit when caught. Other traps, such as live traps, are designed to lure the rabbit in. Traps that kill are considered inhumane. They also pose a risk to any small domestic pet in the area, who accidentally wanders into the trap. Traps near suspected habitat may have some success; however, the best recourse is to keep yard debris to a minimum.

References

• University of Nebraska: Rabbit Resistant Perennials
• Gardening Club: The Bunny Battle